Mick McCabe: Beware of what 7-on-7 football is really offering high school players

January 6, 2013

Detroit Free Press Sports Writer

The high school football season has been over for a month, so that means the circus has come to town.

It is now time for combines and 7-on-7 -- football's version of AAU basketball -- to take center stage.

While there are far more good AAU programs than bad, the bad ones are so seedy and slimy they smear the reputations of all AAU programs. That is the road we are traveling with 7-on-7 football.

Combines also have become popular. Youngsters are timed in things like the 40-yard dash and shuttle run. They also do repetitions in the weight room, and all of these results are tabulated for college coaches to evaluate.

This is where kids' "measurables" are determined. Since college coaches are offering scholarships long before players begin their senior seasons -- and foolishly seem to be making recruiting decisions based on someone's "measurables" instead of what they see him do on film -- these combines serve a purpose, to a degree.

That is why high school juniors, sophomores and freshmen travel the country weekend after weekend trying to improve their "measurables" at combines, which have gotten out of hand.

But that is nothing compared to what 7-on-7 has become.

This isn't about the 7-on-7 teams whose coaches will be happy to direct their players to college coaches who fill their open hands with piles of cash.

This is about 7-on-7 in general when the guys running the programs locally are all good guys. They aren't asking college coaches for money -- they are asking you.

But when they tell you 7-on-7 is the best way to get your kid a football scholarship, you should know that they simply aren't telling you the truth.

These people are preying on the naivety of parents who go through this process once. They know the magic words are "exposure" and "scholarship," and when parents hear those words they can't reach for their checkbooks fast enough.

While the NCAA has taken action to make sure these events can't be held on college campuses and college coaches cannot attend, the 7-on-7 people will tell you they are videotaping these events so all the college coaches can see them.

If parents would think this through, they would see 7-on-7 as nothing more than a money grab.

At least AAU basketball can simulate actual game conditions.

In 7-on-7, no one is rushing the quarterback. No one is being tackled. No receiver going over the middle is in any danger of being hit once the ball touches his fingers. Defensive backs are severely limited in what they can and can't do.

So what makes anyone think this stuff is going to get your kid a scholarship?

7-on-7 has evolved into something that goes through the winter, spring and summer and can conflict with a high school's limited 7-on-7 schedule, which is why high school coaches despise it.

A year ago, I asked Lansing Catholic quarterback Cooper Rush about his 7-on-7 experience, and he gushed about it.

"I really got a lot of exposure," said Rush, now a freshman at Central Michigan.

Then I asked him how many scholarship offers he got, and he said he received one: CMU. I would bet anything that scholarship would have been offered had Rush never played 7-on-7.

Even worse is what 7-on-7, coupled with summer camps, did to Warren De La Salle's Shane Morris, who committed to Michigan and missed almost half of the season due to mononucleosis.

"This summer I was going," he told me this fall. "Every weekend I was on a plane. I was gone a lot. I did everything up until the season, and I was going hard. I started getting sick the second week.